Earthquake weather cracked the sky deep
A cool reprise in midstreaked heat
Alight with the flame of desire
burning with a full pink moon  
Sleeping canyons black from fire

Glowed swelling, glimmering into
Neptune’s fantasies, frenzied
Splintered mad with sweltering gems
Shaking the summer from our hair
Dreams falling like stardust into the ravine
As the earth said “anything can be, anything can be...”

Flickering upon cracked faults
Glisten and catch in the night’s sunlight
Devastatingly seductive, smolderingly bright.

Took me to the wrong end of the Mississippi
Blown north from the whistling blues
Dreamt that sweet sound of saxophones
Coloring St. Claude Avenue

Banana leaves melted into evergreens
Where the swamps finally ran cold
Through the mountain ranges of the lakes, and banjos of the plains
Where the countryside grew quiet and old

I grew up on the wrong end of the Mississippi
But now I’m taking that southbound train
Oh honey don’t ask me how I’ve been
It’s a restless, lonesome pain

Something would come of it yet
The last *******-wild, cosmic amphetamine eyes
Howled down the eastern hills
To the city’s beckoning lights

Tramps and harlots light fire from their palms
Blown pupils dark in love sick, longing eyes
Growing with the wild, restless wind
In lustful, glamorous disguise

And there the angel of the evening
Sat upon the sultry heat
As troubadours gaze into the mirror
She pours them pills in restless fleets

And as the city settles
And the western wind starts to blow
The dizzy euphoria sinks away
As their vision starts to close

So dawn breaks the singing night
The buzzing high leaves the blood
The poets and painters
Let their stream of consciousness flood

Torn rhymes cover the wall
Where artists and addicts have met
Where splattered tunes had brayed
Something came of it yet.

The gypsy hymns and railway trails
which you followed into the valley of your trials
Lady Luck brought you enough street child wisdom and thief given kindness
to turn the tracks around and the train whistle to wake me.
Desert saint of your weathered ways
with your thin wrists and moon gleaming lips
Hope to you was like a blinding sunrise, painful to acknowledge, yet sorely lacking without
Never could be without your Larkspur boquets and marigold wreaths
August heat heavy with the scent of cypress trees
Apollo of the dusty sea, flooded the cliffs with light like withering flames
born from boxcar visions and a desperate hunger for that windblown hallelujah we chased down the starlit trestles like missionaries. Summoned from our streetcar medallions, vagabond nymphs, rumbling through moth-eaten states and barren dusks, lazy moon gazing upon our dolorous times and wild days and all our rough and rowdy ways.
No need to heed the judgements of the stars.
With the arid land so wild and lonesome- we weave our own muse into the railway line- followed back to when you were my home, and the streets were the laurel crown of your vagrant fortune.

We've seen lone souls walking desert highways of New Mexico, barefoot hitchhikers along burnt out main drags and closed down drive-ins.
We bought moonshine and turquoise on the Navajo Trail and drank in the dusty neon ghost towns of Route 66.
We went over the Rocky Mountains and found kids singing Woody Guthrie in old gold rush towns of Colorado.
We walked along railroad tracks in the shade of date palms, listened as westward bound freight trains rumbled into the red evenings. A country as mercurial as our very moods.

This land still sings your silent song
I chased it West under suspension bridges
In the empty whiskey bottles along Mississippi railroad tracks
In the sound of sugar sweet air in blue humid mornings
and the cool breath of absinthe sipped by the riverside
flanked by banana leaves.
Heard it in the breeze of swamp-side Cyprus trees, over swaying docks to rod iron French Quarter balconies, above the Bourbon street children drumming hymns of the Bayou's soul.

I went to that stupid festival in the desert
Only to see you on the stage
And share a parliament with you after your set
And watch the way your blue eyes sparkled

I forced myself to wait those 2 hours to text you back
Guided around the grass by friends
Tearing my hair out in nerves

And then I saw you galloping up
Cute smile and curled quirky lips
We shared the gin you snuck in
And watched Lady Gaga
And shared a cigarette
And I wore your coat
And watched your face light up
And you wanted to meet me again.

Out West I found that
Dangerously glittering bohemian lifestyle.

Where Los Angeles falls down with joy
And rumbles deep from its canyon bellies

And when you need some sadness
You split to Berlin
And come back with none of your clothes.

Leave those New York blues behind
Forget the Chelsea Hotel
Living in LA's a lot like Heaven
With all the sins of hell.

Poets, artists, free-thinkers,
Those who are mad and young and crazy and magic
Who sprinkle glitter under their eyes
And run about the night city streets
and flit about in a dazzling, burning light
who are enchanted by the very world in front of their
long criss-crossed lashes.

But very few wear those round rose-coloured glasses
In which I view the world through

Who, Like some dreaming Tom Thumb
Will happily sew patches
Embroidered in free-footed ecstasy

Take me to the train station
To the moonlit tracks
With waves upon the rails
And spitfire cracks
Let me rest among the passengers
In their blue, tired seats
Spun by frayed end threads
Wilted in the streets
Take me past foreign, foggy neon signs
To the western, wild call
When the whistle bends into the wind
I’ll know I’ve seen it all

streets that once sang salvation
capricious with their mercury cracks
promised a sunlit city of night
to charismatic tramps

starlet girls drag men into motel rooms
desperate to make a buck
cafe drifters fumble for broken cigarettes
young harlots curse their luck

neon upstreet outlaws
don't hang around this part of town
just poor people's shadows and ambulance drivers
drifting around

the subway poet's disillusioned
didn't find his crystal jukebox queen
and despite his desperate, lovestruck words
the city is onerous to please

Stargazing cactus bloom
desert daydream
skipping salted stones
lost highway
The Mojave a light with
fire flowers
road side decor
for this age of weekend hotel floors
arid breeze
kissing us dizzy
gambled, addicted
visiting Mirage down in the valley below
city glow
dark hair,
light eyes
foreign tongue I love you so
Sweet tequila
lifted above the ground
spin me, spin me, that gleeful aquarius sheen
you're amazing
you're a light in my life, Casino Moonshine
switching gears, half eaten diner meals
roadside pitstops for broken windows
whistling wind
like a gilded finch.
Joshua trees from over Nordic seas
soft skin getting lucky 7 spins
tingling touch
dark lidded lust
euphoric hymm
it's him it's him it's him
orange sky
brusts bright
in my tired amphetamine eyes

Lovelorn and sore she drifts to shore
Singing hymns from the sirens lure
Crying distant deep in the surf
What was all that sailing for?

Gods of the sea, sleeping serpentine
Neptune rising with his blue fantasy,
Casting hope into sleeping canyon nights
Days spent in pale dawn’s love bright light

The ocean breeze softly sings
Moody eyes safe beneath the sheets
All hungry sailors look to the sea
For a siren to come and sing them to sleep

All wicked smiles sitting in broken sinks In dive bar bathrooms Our shoulder blades slamming against the mirror ******, little girl lost, in hazy clubs Flitting about dazzling New York nights pupils blown in soft, doe eyes, baby-faced, pistol-quick smiles Torn denim jacket sleeping on a greyhound Nights spent pacing the train station Didn’t eat for days stayed up for nights Hearts rabbiting in our chests Windows open sitting in that Brooklyn loft Walking to the East River at sunrise.

The dangerously glamorous life of Chateau Marmont, where everybody is racing at an incredible speed. Velvet nights fraught with promise and mystery under large canyon moons. Skinny dipping in the heated saltwater pool, bodies dripping wet, in the privacy of palm trees, old Hollywood charm in swaying leaves fanned across the indigo sky, as we dangled over the city. Parties in the hidden bungalows, punctuated by pinot grigio and mescal mules, in and out of bedrooms and beds and clothes. ******* on hands, car keys forgotten, I tore your silk shirt as you threw it off the bed.

The same gilded sun of western dreams
It shines so lone for kinds as us
Wandering eyes hypnotized
By that cosmic, copper lust

I wonder what its like in your city by the bay
How the streets look without that soft neon decay.
The rumblings from distant shores makes it hard to sleep.
Like nights spent on Long Island up on Amphetamines.

A troubled mind is hard to find.
All backwards words and broken rhymes.

Tell me I've the music to match a torched soul
Eyes like California mines dripping in gold
I've got that northern soul and those french blues
And you're my new age, wild western muse
Together we're nearing those iconic fires
American paradise, novel sunshine, write me my desires
Neon soaked, West Hollywood Rimbaud
With roadhouse sheetmusic and nowhere to go
The same gilded sun of western dreams
It shines so lone for kinds as us
Wandering eyes hypnotized by that cosmic, copper lust
Revelry scorching night into day
Magnetic soul, queen of the coast, blue highway  
Setting your sleep aside,
Driving with those wild mercurial eyes

Where is my muse
lost in pixies dreaming over Hollywood hills
parties over gleaming cities,
hidden houses,
quiet roofs
Gilded eyes suggesting otherwise
tugging on grey peacoats
fragile Virgo risings
Beings of the sea
of scorpionic lust
drowned in ***** with lemons from the tree.
Beatnik drunk,
Bukowski wannabe
Missing keys
misplaced by a Neptunian tragedy.

A flurry of setting cracks among the steel
Laying blaze to the ocean’s fate
manifest destiny, the cosmo gold of the west
Where the star is not dying, but setting to bring forth another sun
To whistle on those wild lonesome
Days of rough northern terrain
Where you dug up our souls from the winding river
Whistled sweet into jazz dreams
Faintly singing in mute messages sent down
In the bayou’s mighty hymn  
Cobalt struck by Divine light,
gifted from above
Venus rising from the sea was just spellbound by daydreamers endless sins tormented by minds
Haunted by wills and ego of misleading love torn down from artistic sacrifice,
To heal is to help, through instilling our gift of such cosmic gold, sewn into Apollo’s harp for lost souls to be saved, sung asleep by the triumph of our tribulations

The heatwave stretches, stopping only in the silent noons
Rolling blackouts litter the city like swaths of ash
I slip out onto the sidewalk, invisible without the streetlights
Baited and untraceable, I steal figs from the neighbor’s tree

I don’t buy groceries these days
Instead I eat the figs on my way home
not bothering to wash them
We’ll return to the dirt anyway,
We’re no different from the earth, its fruits, and its flowers  

I like to think of them as the forbidden fruit
Condemning me in the lifetime and the next
My kitchen is full,
overflowing with them
More ripening in paper bags by the window

I’ve spent the summer reading
Cannery Row, a Coney Island of the Mind,
I pass the time waiting for my chestnut crown come Autumn
But here in California the leaves never wilt, and the shadows never get taller

The neon sign above my building burns into the scorching night
I clamber upon the fire escape hoping for a breeze to drift down from the rising hills
My placards of paradise fading on the wrought iron
But still I soldier on, guileless against the beating sun